Let’s take a few minutes to get settled and recap this weekend.
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We all drove out here yesterday evening to get away from the normal hustle and bustle…
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We then heard Fr Hogan tell us about, 1,2,3.
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Then this morning Annie and I talked to you about:
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God’s love is true love and God’s love has 4 main attributes, FFFF.
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Annie and I also talked to you about how Man is made in the image of God, especially in our sexuality,
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and that marriage is a sacrament that makes God’s image visible here on Earth.
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Annie then spoke about some practical ideas about how to live out our sexuality in a FFFF manner.
This brings us to right now, now we are going to talk about rejecting LeftBar and how to gain real sexual freedom.
Having a cold or being sick is very oppressive.
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I remember about 6 months ago when I had a very tough 3 day virus.
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Two bucket disease.
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I had fever that was burning me alive,
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but I felt so cold that my body couldn’t stop convulsing even though I was in sweats and under a sheet and two comforters.
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I was two tired to get up out of bed,
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my throat hurt to much to swallow,
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and I Ached - Full marathon.
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I felt oppressed.
- Just as we can be opressed from a severe cold, we can also be opressed in many other ways…
- And, just like we need to take care of our bodies by eating right, exercising and getting enough sleep, we also need to take care of our spiritual health.
- There of course are the normal things we know to do to take care of our spiritual health, like: going to mass on Sunday, daily prayer, and forgiving the guy that nearly ran you over with his bike while you walked to class, and so on…
- But there are also those other parts of taking care of our physical and spiritual health that we conveniently ignore, like going for a physical. I mean no one really relished the idea of having to turn and cough… Similarly, no one likes to consider if they are using their sexual desire in an all together holy manner…
Today I’m going to talk to you about three main ideas…
- First – we need to know what it means to be healthy
- Next – need to take a quick peek into the medical journal for sexual health (God’s law’s on the topic)
- Finally – we need some practical ideas about how to maintain our health and how to get well if we are sick.
So, let’s jump into the first topic and look at what it means to be healthy.
- In the highest of standards, we can know that God is healthy
- And, since from Genesis we know that we have been made in God’s image and likeness, we can also know that with the highest of standards, when we properly image God, we are healthy.
- OK, so far easy enough, God is healthy and when we image Him we are healthy
- But, how can we properly image God?
- Well, if we had to figure this out on our own, life might be tough
- But, In God’s goodness and love, and always with our best interests in mind, God has given us his law.
- So, God is healthy, when we image Him we are healthy, and we can image Him by following His law.
- And who is the best person to ask about God’s law? Could it be? Naaa, It’s probably…GOD!
- The best doctor is the one that can prevent you from getting sick in the first place, and this is exactly why God has given us His law.
- Please keep in mind, that God’s law is NEVER oppressive! I cannot stress this enough, God’s law is NEVER oppressive! I stress this so much because all our lives we have had well intentioned people that have imposed their rules on us and taken away our freedom, but God’s laws are not this way.
- God has given us His law out of the goodness of his heart to show us how to properly image Himself and therefore how to be healthy.
- Imagine how much better your doctor would be at keeping you from getting sick and healing you if he was the one who knit you together piece by piece from the very first moment of your existence.
- And just in case you have been heavily burdened by rules in the past, and doubt if any authority figure could have your best interests at heart, take a second to look at the crucifix and remind yourself that maybe this physician is a little bit different.
- Now, if we were forced to comply with God’s law like the rest of creation, then we couldn’t fully image God, because God is Himself free. This is yet another reason that God’s law is not oppressive,
- Instead, the greatest gift that God has given us (besides Himself) is our freedom!
- Just to give you an idea about how much God values out freedom..
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Consider for a second that God created us knowing that we would use our freedom to turn away from Him and sin, against His will. But, He let us do it.
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Consider also that He gave us freedom, knowing that when He would take on flesh and bones to redeem us from our mistake, that we would again us our freedom to whip Him, mock Him, torture Him with excruciating pain and kill Him. But again He let us do it.
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Imagine that after all this, we still continue to sin against Him, and He lets us do it, all b/c He knew the value of the freedom He gave us.
- The value of freedom is also the ability to love.
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If we were not free, we could not choose to bring a child into this world and care for her.
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If we were not free, we could not appreciate the smile of a child whom you have just given a gift.
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If we were not free, we could not enjoy the secure and gentle embrace of a lover in marriage.
- Freedom is a wonderful gift, and God respects our freedom infinitely.
- True freedom which allows us to image God is not freedom as our culture sees freedom.
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Our culture views freedom in terms of what it can get or get away with, this is the so called freedom of a slave
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For example: an alcoholic believes that he exercised his free choice when he picked up that last shot and downed it. As he see’s it, he had a choice, to drink or to pass.
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But, since he is a slave to alcohol, I ask you… Did he freely choose? Could he have actually said “no” to that drink?
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For the alcoholic, the answer is that he cannot turn down that next drink, and when you can’t say “No”, your yes means nothing. In fact, this alcoholic's choice was an act of slavery and not an act of freedom.
- Instead, TRUE FREEDOM is the freedom to do good and to give!
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A true act of freedom is like the “Yes” of Mary…
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It is a freedom that gives and is a freedom that will also bring true happiness, not only for yourself, but also for others…
- Review:
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So, we know that God is healthy and that when we image Him we are healthy.
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We know that God has given us His law so that we know how to image Him.
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And, we know that God has given us freedom so we can choose to give ourselves freely.
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And we know that when we give ourselves freely in a way that images God we will be healthy and happy.
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But what does all this have to do with sexual health?
- The reason I have chosen to focus on sexual health is b/c it is in our sexuality that we can most image God!
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Our sexual desire is the desire to love as God loves!
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And when we make a sincere gift of ourselves through our sexuality we most closely image God.
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Every person is called to be a gift of self through their sexuality.
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Every man is called to be both a husband and a father
- Priest
- Husband
- Sister
- Wife
- But let’s circle back around to God’s law which allows us to image Him freely.
- Unfortunately, we in our fallen nature do not always live up to our potential, so I must spend a minute to talk about healing.
- Example: Clare dumping milk and asking for more
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God, who always has our best interests at heart, will allow us to feel the consequences of our sins as an encouragement to regain our freedom that was lost when we sinned.
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Sin always enslaves us, even if we do not immediately feel the affects of it. It is like a parasite that just slowly devours us until it seriously cripples us or even kills us.
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But if through allowing us to experience the pain we have done to ourselves, God can get us to the doctor quick, He has again done us a favor while still respecting our freedom every step along the way.
- So, lets review this first section of my talk about what it means to be healthy:
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We know that God is healthy and that when we image Him we are healthy.
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We know that God has given us His law so that we know how to image Him.
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We know that God has given us freedom so we can choose to give ourselves freely.
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We also know that when we give ourselves freely in a way that images God we will be healthy and happy.
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We know that we can image God most fully in our sexuality
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And finally we know that when we fall, God will allow us to feel the affects of our sin to help encourage us to come back to Him.
- Now that we know that we are healthy when we image God, let’s move on to the second major point of my talk, by cracking open the medical journal and answering 2 questions…
- Jesus Christ lived with us for 33 years. During that time, he did many wonderful things, He redeemed us, He healed the sick, He gave sight to the blind, and He left us the fullness of God’s law.
- Jesus first taught His law to His disciples, and they to their disciples until it has come to us in an unbroken line through the Bible and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
- It is important to start this section out by saying that Jesus Christ, the Bible (the Word of God), and Jesus’ Church is not and never has been down on sex! Please let me repeat this point. The Church is not down on sex!
- In fact, the Church holds human sexuality, human sex, and everything that leads up to it in such high regard, that it has attempted to protect the proper meaning of sex and it’s proper form at a tremendous cost.
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Anglican split
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Humane Vitae
- Review
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So, now we know that God’s laws regarding sex have been given to us by Jesus and passed down to us from Him in the Bible and through the Magisterium (or teaching office of the Church)
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We also know that the Church, following Jesus’ example, values sex and has suffered significantly to protect it.
- But what are the Christ’s laws about sex?
- Jesus’ laws about sex can actually be summed up into two simple statements…
- Using ourselves by lustful imaginations (fantasizing), masturbation, contraception (condoms, the pill, or early withdrawal), immodest dress and sexually explicit language are all sins that are against our God given dignity and they enslave us and cause us to loose our freedom.
- These sins against ourselves reject what Christ taught about our bodies being a temple of the Holy Spirit.
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Example: If you are hungry, would you walk into your neighborhood Catholic Church, go up to the tabernacle, and just start chowing down on Jesus’ uneaten body from the mass earlier in the day? Of course not!
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This is similar to what a person does when they masturbate.
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When someone masturbates, they have taken something of great dignity, their body, and used it to bring themselves a brief moment of gratification by fulfilling an urge
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In fact, the only reason that anyone would even begin to masturbate would be because they did not see the great dignity of their body
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Example II: When you see a beautiful picture of Mary (and Mary was a very attractive woman), Do you allow your imagination to run wild with sexual thoughts of her? Of course not! This would be absolutely offensive!
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But, does the beautiful woman sitting in class next to you have any less God given dignity?
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The answer is no, and we should not allow our imagination to run wild over her either (no matter how boring the class may be)
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Your body and her body are temples of the Holy Spirit and where not made to be used.
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And to imagine these things would be using your mind in a way that is against your dignity.
- These sins against ourselves also leave us impotent to make a true gift of self when a real opportunity to do so arises (i.e. in marriage)
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A habit of masturbation will carry itself into marriage as well.
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Many people with this habit believe that when they get married, masturbation will end. Unfortunately, this addiction carries on
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A man who is used to the instant gratification of masturbation will find it very difficult to respect his wife’s free will about when to have sex or not.
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Often husband who is used to this instant gratification will hold it against his wife that sex is not as readily available to him as masturbation was. He will blame his wife, who will also be frustrated by this disrespect and conflict will exist.
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Another example would be of a man who is used to letting his lustful imaginations run free.
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A man who does not have ownership of his own imagination will often find himself imagining another woman while having sex with his wife.
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Doing this is cheating on her in his heart, and how healthy is a marriage in which one or both of the spouses is consistently unfaithful?
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But these are just a few examples of how we can use ourselves against our own dignity, and a few examples of why we should not.
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Now let’s look at God’s second law reguarding sex, using others
- Using others, by engaging in premarital sex (sex outside of marriage), oral or anal sex, mutual masturbation (which is when a couple exchange foreplay outside of marriage, but don’t actually go as far as having sex) or looking at pornography fails to respect the God given dignity of the other person while at the same time causing us again to lose our own freedom
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Let me give you an extreme example, rape not only does an tremendous amount of harm to the victim, but it also destroys the image of God in the perpetrator, because God will never use force to get what He wants. The rapist quickly comes to believe that no woman would ever willingly give herself to him freely and so he will grasp at this gift and rape again.
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A less extreme example is the cheater who asks for someone else’s math homework. The Cheater looses his freedom by slowly beginning over time to doubt his ability to complete the work himself and so he feels he cannot stop cheating. The person being cheated off of has also harmed themselves by giving over their work and not respecting their own dignity and by not respecting the dignity of the other person.
- I want to point out one more thing about using other…
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We all know that doing two things wrong do not make a right. In the same way, two people who have mutually agreed to use each other for a while have in no way diminished the harm that they are doing to themselves or the other person.
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This is true even when the couple loves each other or even if they plan to get married.
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Either way all they can really do by using each other is damage their relationship or future marriage.
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Think back for a second to Annie’s and my first talk for just a second and how we discussed how even if a couple loves each other and plans to get married, that premarital sex fails the test of God love because it is not free, full, and not faithful.
- So, lets review the second portion of my talk before we more on…
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We know that God’s laws regarding sex came to us from Jesus and have been passed down through the Bible and the Church
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We know that the Church, following Jesus’ example values sex and has suffered significantly to protect it.
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We know that Jesus’ laws about sex can be summed up in the statements:
- We should not use ourselves, and
- We should not use others
But lets move on to the final portion of my talk which is some practical advise about how to maintain our sexual health and how to get healthy if we are already sick.
- If you are already sick, I will not deny that it is difficult and takes commitment to get well.
- If you are healthy, please use these healing methods as preventative medicine to maintain your health and be awake and ready when temptation comes
- Confession. A saint is a sinner that failed 10,000 times and tried 100001. Confession also increases purity.
- HALT
- Avoid the near occasion of sin (friends, porn, relationships, movies, posters)
- Do not repress, Explain the difference between repression and controlling your imagination
- Imagine Mary
- Do you have a sister? Or think of your mom.
- Lay down in the shape of a cross.
- Practice denying yourself what you want and gain more and more freedom (fasting)
- When you are tempted to lust pray a quick little prayer like “You are a woman, made in the image and likeness of God, not to be used for my own desires. You are the Bride of Christ.”
- Finally, examine your conscious regularly (preferably daily)
